UN group accuses Burundi leaders of crimes against humanity

The New York Times

GENEVA — For more than two years, critics of President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi and independent activists have fallen victim to murders, disappeared into secret detention centers and escaped to neighboring countries, recounting torture and rape at the hands of the military and the police.

Now, United Nations human rights investigators say they believe Burundi’s top leaders and state security agencies committed crimes against humanity.

A panel of investigators set up by the U.N. Human Rights Council a year ago said Monday that it had delivered a list of suspects to the U.N. High Commissioner for human rights and was giving the Security Council another list of people it said should be targeted with sanctions. It urged the International Criminal Courtto open an inquiry.

As the panel prepares to present its findings this month to the Human Rights Council, of which Burundi is one of 47 members, its report also raises questions about whether the country should be allowed to keep that status.

“We were struck by the scale and the brutality of the violations,” Fatsah Ouguergouz, an Algerian jurist who led the three-person panel, said in a statement.

Mr. Ouguergouz did not name Mr. Nkurunziza as a suspect, but the panel attributed the crimes to “the highest levels of the state.” It described a parallel system of government in which major decisions, including some that led to major human rightsviolations, were made by the president and a small entourageclose to him.

The panel found that the abuses “were frequently of an extremely cruel nature,” and in many instances inflicted serious physical and psychological trauma on victims, most of whom were young men suspected of opposition activities or sympathies.